Cordeiro: Kings MMA Doors Open to ‘Shogun’

Former
Chute Boxe Academy coach Rafael
Cordeiro found Mauricio
“Shogun” Rua’s performance against Jon Jones in
the UFC
128 main event on March 19 in Newark, N.J. deeply unsettling.
Rua, a longtime Cordeiro pupil, succumbed to a third-round
technical knockout against Jones, as he surrendered the UFC light
heavyweight crown in a woefully one-sided affair.

The doors to Cordeiro’s
Kings MMA academy in Huntington Beach, Calif., remain open to
Rua, who now owns a 3-3 mark inside the Octagon.

“It just depends on him,” Cordeiro (Pictured) told Sherdog.com. “It
would be very easy to say that Shogun coming to train at my gym
would be the solution to his problems. I think it would be the
first step to solving things. I think the first step to solving
your problems is for you to seek good training. That’s not to say
he hasn’t done that, because he has a good team, but I’ve seen some
weaknesses in Shogun that I had not seen before.”

Jones wiped out Rua, standing and on the ground, and emerged from
the bout virtually unscathed. Never before had the 2005
Pride Fighting Championships middleweight grand prix winner
been so soundly defeated. For Cordeiro, it was particularly tough
to stomach.

“I was very sad on one hand, and it was a very sad night for me
because this is a guy I graduated from white belt to black belt. I
have a lot of affection for him,” Cordeiro said. “Every time I saw
him coming to the ring, whether I was there or not, I had a reason
to be proud because it was a black belt of mine who was in
there.

“Even though we didn’t train together, his defeat was a very big
revelation to me,” he added. “It’s hard to see your student going
through a situation so complicated in the ring. Nobody until then
had put Shogun [in a situation like that].”

Widely regarded as one of the top light heavyweights of all-time,
Rua entered the cage against Jones on the heels of his third
reconstructive knee surgery since 2007. The 29-year-old Brazilian
had not fought in almost a year. Cordeiro believes he has an ideal
team in place to assist in Rua’s recovery.

“My gym is open to all the guys,” he said. “When I opened this gym,
it was always my intention to bring together good things and new. I
want to add value to these fighters, and, so far, nothing has
changed.

“It would be very easy to say to you today that I have the cure for
Shogun’s problems,” Cordeiro added. “The most important thing for
me is that he knows that there is a group of competent people to
help him here. Again, that’s not to say he didn’t have competent
people at his side [leading up to the Jones fight]. I think going
forward there are some things that happened that showed he needed
some special people to work with him.”

Gleidson Venga and Fernando Kallas contributed to this
report.

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